Embedded systems are growing more and more complex, requiring a range of external management applications such as SNMP, Command Line Interfaces, TNM, WBEM, etc. These applications have completely different interfaces, network protocols and purposes but must all interface to the low-level internals of the system.
In order for a system to perform successfully in a user environment, it is necessary that the user be able to configure the system to operate as desired, and to be able to observe the system for troubleshooting and monitoring purposes. Further, the system needs to be able to provide its configuration at any moment and needs to be able to be restored to captured configuration. The configuration may possibly be edited offline. This functionality is collectively known as “management”.
Management may be effected through a variety of user interfaces. The most common is Command Line Interface (CLI), where configuration and display commands are entered in text mode and promptly executed. Another common interface is Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) where configuration and monitoring data is transmitted over the network.
The configuration data may be associated with settings and information about the system. For example, a user may use a system console to enter system specific commands to configure components in the system (e.g., setting a speed of a line card in a switch, etc.). As time passes, there may be multiple configuration commands issued by the user. When a system is powered off, this configuration information may be lost.
The monitoring data may indicate how often something happens in the system. For example, a network router system may handle multiple different types of traffic, and it is important to be able to get an understanding of how much traffic the system is handling and whether upgrades are necessary before the system is overloaded. Another example includes determining how often errors occur in an area of the system and whether corrective action needs to be taken before a failure occurs. Statistic data is typically never reset. Statistic data either stays the same or grows. Although there may be different types of statistic data, the type of statistic data collected typically relate to performance statistic and error statistic. Thus, one of the advantages of being able to configure the system and to collect the statistic data are important in maintaining the system as well as in predicting when upgrades or replacement is necessary.